“I don’t know. You’re the lawyer, you should know this, right? Me, I’d say not impossible.”

“Okay, let’s go with that for the moment. Say Turner knows he’s going to jail if it’s him and Como each pointing fingers at each other. Except if Como’s dead, then it’s Turner’s finger and that finger’s only pointing in one direction, at Como. Como stole the money, misappropriated the money, it’s all his fault.”

“That’s good,” Elliot said.

“Yeah, but… if that were the case, I’m surprised Turner didn’t even try to make it look like a suicide-Como knows he’s going down for this, and decides to kill himself. But still, in general terms, I think it flies. Or”-Roake’s eyes lit up-“even better… you’re going to like this… Turner’s got some rehab and paroled people in these residential units and he hires one of them to take Como out. They don’t do it, he violates them back, and they go to jail. And, hell, what do they care about Como anyway?”

“So it’s a hit?”

“At least it’s a theory that works. And we’ve got to have something involving both Len Turner and the money, right?”

Elliot clucked. “It’s tempting to think so. Maybe Hunt ought to talk to him.”

“Thanks, Jeff,” she said, “but that’s pretty much exactly what I came here to talk him out of. He’s basically working for Turner, but he doesn’t want to be messing with him. Besides, Turner’s controlling the funds for the reward.”

Elliot raised his eyebrows. “So you’re telling me Hunt gives Turner a pass? He’s not going to look at him at all?”

“That’s my hope. They’re just supposed to be a clearinghouse for information going to the police.”

“So what do your psychic powers say?”

“Unfortunately,” she said, “they say I’m whistling in the wind.”

When they looked in the trunk of the limo out at the Sunset Youth Project, they found that its tire iron was in fact missing. Now, back at his desk in the homicide detail, Devin Juhle hung up his telephone and looked across his desk and then the desk of his partner, Russo, where she sat with the tip of her tongue sticking out through her lips as she labored over the typed transcription of an interview they’d done on another of their cases.

Picking up a paper clip, he tossed it across, and she looked up in exasperation.

“What?”

“You’ll never believe who that was.”

“George Clooney.”

“Nope. Guess again.”

“If it’s not George Clooney, I don’t care who it was.”

“Yes, you will.”

She picked up the paper clip, unbent it, bent it back. “It couldn’t have been the lab already with the tire iron.”

Juhle nodded with satisfaction. “Mr. Como must have been more important than even we thought he was. And they found a trace of his DNA. Strong profile, and no doubt about it.”

“How’d the lab even find the DNA after that soak in the lake?”

“Probably that prayer to Saint Jude I said.”

“But really?”

“Really. Hair follicle stuck to the tire iron. It settled into the mud and the mud covered it up so all of it didn’t wash away. In a million years it might have been a hair fossil if we’d have left it alone.” Juhle leaned back, linked his hands around the back of his head. “You know what this means? Warrant for the car.”

Russo’s shoulders sagged as she let out a sigh. “And I suppose we’re going to want to do this tonight?”

“Get the warrant tonight, impound it tonight before anybody can get it any cleaner, do the search first thing tomorrow.” He gestured to the marked-up paperwork on his partner’s desk. “Sarah, what’s got into you? Look what you’re working on when the game’s afoot. The trail’s heating up. I can feel it.” Now he was on his feet. “Let’s go find us a judge. You with me? I know you’re with me.”

She sighed again, with perhaps exaggerated weariness. “Yes, kimosabe, I’m with you.”

Much to Hunt’s delight, Tamara had fielded three calls in the afternoon from previous clients who all seemed to have developed amnesia about the last six months. Or maybe Hunt had served sufficient penance for his transgressions and his firm’s name in the newspaper suddenly announced to the legal world at large that he was back in business. If the city’s well-connected service-oriented charities were entrusting him with work, then clearly his name was no longer anathema, and his firm no longer a pariah.

All three of the clients were law firms located in buildings that were within a short walking distance from Hunt’s office, and by seven-thirty on this Tuesday night he was walking out of the last one at Market and Spear, now wrestling with something that had been the least of his worries over the past months-staffing. In the past two and a half hours, he’d just reestablished personal relations with these big-time litigators who needed private investigators to sit in on their depositions or serve subpoenas or locate and deliver witnesses. Everybody he’d talked to seemed genuinely enthusiastic that he was back in business-had they actually thought he’d closed up?-and all of them had work that, of course, couldn’t wait. After all, this was the law, where nothing could wait. Everything had to be done yesterday latest. When could he start?

But he only had Mickey, who didn’t have any kind of license besides the one that he used to drive, and Tamara, ditto, who’d been back on the job for a whole two days now. Thinking it never rained but it poured, but basically happy about it, Hunt headed back to his office to make some calls to see if he could line up a few underemployed, licensed stringers that he could bring on to do some work for him temporarily.

When he got inside the main door, though, he noticed the message light blinking “ 1” and pushed the button to hear Juhle pass along the news that Hunt’s anonymous source might be in line for part of the reward after all, since the police lab had discovered Dominic Como’s hair on the tire iron they’d retrieved from the drained lagoon. And what did Hunt think of that?

Hunt thought first that Cecil Rand would be happy to see some money at the end of this, and second that it was not too surprising, finding the murder weapon near the scene of the crime, although the speed of the police lab’s analysis was nearly unprecedented. He also didn’t think any of this was overwhelmingly important. It didn’t identify a suspect, not unless there were fingerprints or other identifying marks on the tire iron, and there couldn’t have been or Juhle would have mentioned them.

Hunt went back through the door behind Tamara’s station, switched on his light, and, pulling the chair up behind his own desk, sat down and started going through the notes he’d taken at his various meetings, estimating his personnel needs for the next couple of weeks. Touching his mouse, he awakened the computer screen in front of him, and he pulled up his address book.

And then suddenly he wasn’t looking at the screen anymore, but had slumped back in his chair, some barely registered thought nagging at him. For a minute, maybe more, he didn’t move except to squeeze the skin around his lower lip.

Finally, he got up and walked outside again to the reception area, over to Tamara’s desk. There, on her yellow pad, she’d written the names and telephone numbers of the reward callers, and up near the top was Nancy Neshek, who hadn’t been either at work or at her home all day. Hunt had tried for the fourth and last time just at five o’clock, before he’d gone out for his first meeting, and neither had her workplace heard from her nor had she answered her home telephone.

Hunt sat down in Tamara’s chair and punched in the Neshek home number. On the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up again and Hunt waited and then, on the off chance that she was monitoring her calls and would pick up when she heard him, he left a brief message identifying himself. He then waited again to give her time to reach the phone, until at last, when it was clear she wasn’t going to answer, he hung up.